Turandot, Liudmyla Monastyrska; Calaf, Yonghoon Lee;  Liu, Ermonela Jaho; Timur, Ferruccio Furlanetto; conductor, Marco Armiliato; director, Franco Zeffirelli

Oh dear…… Turandot is a bit of a problem really in any performance but particularly in this – presumably fairly ancient – Zeffirelli one. Orientalist, sexist (at least as far as Liu is concerned, and to some extent Turandot as well), racist, patronising (even for its time Turandot as a work must have seemed backward looking in terms of story and attitudes), badly acted, over-busy, stuffed full with sets, too many people on stage, ridiculous costumes….it’s the kind of thing that gives opera a bad name and it’s not a comfortable view. The Zeffirelli production is frankly monstrous – every corner of the stage is filled with ‘business’ and over-large sets, with constant unnecessary movement and dancing. But, conversely, the music is often marvellous – wonderful harmonies which move beyond Wagner to Mahler and Debussy, maybe Stravinsky, too, despite the silly Chinoiserie of some of the melodies at times. The fact that Puccini did not live to complete the opera doesn’t help – the final duet seems weak both dramatically and musically in the Alfano completion. For the most part, I just shut my eyes and wallowed in the Met orchestra on top form. I came across a nice quote from the LA Times that I think makes a reasonable point about the music – “What makes “Turandot” a true Chinese opera is not that it sounds Chinese but it follows the Tao. The orchestra is like the sky above and the ocean below, hurling clouds and surging waves, ever changing, ear-catching in colours and surprising in harmonies that don’t predictably resolve, keeping you off guard just often enough. This is the environment, and as striking as the demands of the singers, the orchestra is the environment with which they must become one.” Turandot is one of those works that positively screams for regietheater, but we were a million miles away from it here.

The Zeffirelli production tries to deal with the evident non-Chinese faces of most of the performers on stage by getting quite a lot of them to wear masks – however inevitably that doesn’t apply to the principals, and so the production looks inescapably Western focused.

As indicated above, for the most part, the acting was poor and there was little chemistry between the performers – Turandot dealt in semaphore signals, Calaf didn’t even bother with those but just stood still, ocasionally bending his legs, to deliver , Timur and the Emperor just have to be static anyway. The one person who really made an effort (and what an effort) was Ermonela Jaho, who was very convincing and passionate as Liu.

The singing – again with one exception – was good but not more than that. Liudmyla Monastyrska produced some lovely legato singing at times, and she banged out the high notes appropriately but she remained a cypher – which up to a point is what she is, so acceptable, but there was no change in the final act. There was sometimes quite a wide vibrato to her voice which occasionally was wearing. There’s one exception to these comments – Lyudmilla Monastyrska is Ukrainian (and in fact replaced the now boycotted Anna Netrebko in this run of performances) and the aria ‘In Questa Reggia’’s lines are extraordinarily appropriate to Ukraine’s situation at present, menaced by an aggressive enemy. She said in an interview that she totally identified with the state of her country in singing that aria, and this came across very movingly. Yonghoon Lee was a good proponent of can belto – reliable, always delivering on the high notes, but with little sensitivity or lightness of touch. Ermonela Jaho was in a completely different league to these two – floating some beautiful high notes, wonderfully varied in tone, her’s was a masterclass in how to do opera well on stage. Although, as I said above, I enjoyed wallowing in the music I did think that Marco Amiliato’s conducting didn’t produce the sort of visceral effects good Puccini conducting – I still remember the glorious sounds Zubin Mehta conjured up in the 1979 ROHCG production of La Fanciulla del West – can produce, and I thought the first act dragged.

On the whole, I felt I should have done something else that evening……….

Edale Music Festival 2022

April 29, 30 & May 1st

This was an exciting weekend where Martin Cropper, the Director, some staff and ex-students, and current advanced students, at the Sheffield Music Academy performed a weekend of chamber music at Edale Parish Church. As I was involved in organising this, I am simply placing this on record rather than attempting to ‘review’. Of the 5 concerts, my personal favourites were the Schubert Quintet and the Vivaldi……but each concert had masses going for it and much to enjoy. I enjoyed getting to know the Brahms Sextet a little better – and indeed the Schubert Piano Trio is something I’ve not heard that often – but the Schubert Quintet is a work I have known since I was 13 – I remember sitting in Finsbury Park in North London at that age, listening to this on the BBC Third Programme (as it was called in 1965) and being overwhelmed by the beauty of the music. A strange journey from North London in 1965 to Edale in 2022….(57 years later…..) . The skills and abilities of the current students were well displayed and truly remarkable, in some cases – and never less than wholly excellent.

The programme was as follows

Friday 29 April 7pm

Oakham Piano trio

• Beethoven Op.70 no.1 (Ghost)
• Schubert Op.100 in E Flat

Saturday 30th April 11:45am

Sheffield Music Academy soloists. Various solos by current students, culminating in a performance of Prokofiev’s Variations on a Hebrew Theme

Saturday 30th April 7pm

• Brahms Sextet no. 2 in G Op.36
• Schubert Quintet in C

Sunday 1 May 11.30am

Duos – two by two: Bartok – Duo for two violins; Kodaly – Duo for violin and cello

Sunday 1 May 7pm

Edale Festival Orchestra

• Haydn Cello Concerto in C
• Vivaldi Four Seasons

London Philharmonic Orchestra, Enrique Mazzola conductor, Renée Fleming soprano. Dvořák: Overture, Othello; Verdi: Dances, Willow song, Ave Maria from Otello; Strauss: Introduction; Moonlight Music; Finale from Capriccio

The programme of this (great) concert was built around Ms Fleming, and the Othello/Richard Strauss themes of the first and second had little connection between the two other than Ms Fleming’s feeling comfortable singing extracts from both of them.

Enrique Mazzolla seemed to run a tight ship as conductor, and the LPO sparkled and crackled in the (silly Orientalist) Otello ballet music, with tight rhythms and a general sense that the players were enjoying themselves. Dvorak’s Othello overture was frankly a bit of a bore, despite an attractive 11 note theme I vaguely recognised and which sounded as though it had popped out of one of the mature symphonies – but again it was well played. It was one of those Dvorak works where Wagner, rather than Brahms or Czech folk song predominated – a distinct melody that sounded like Brunnhilde’s sleep motive in Die Walkure at one point……

So…..the stage was set for Ms Fleming. I last saw her in 2016 at ROHCG, when she was singing one of her last Marschallins before retiring from the stage (with Andris Nelsons conducting, and very good it was too, though not effacing memories of the 1974 Carlos Kleiber performances I went to with Helga Dernesch and Yvonne Minton). But, although now in her early 60s, she clearly feels confident enough to continue to do shortish extracts in the concert hall, and on the evidence of this performance justifiably so. The highlight was undoubtedly ‘Capriccio’ – a lovely performance of the sextet by the LPO front desk strings, a warm glowing horn solo introducing the final scene and a wholly absorbing performance by Ms Fleming as the Countess. Her diction was excellent, with a real sense of the pointing of, and of the meaning of, the words, coming from long experience of playing the role on stage, and she offered some lovely floated high notes, and smooth legato singing. Altogether her voice sounded truly ‘Straussian’. I have never heard any part of this work live before, though I am hoping to experience it in full in Munich in July, with Diana Damrau, so it felt a true privilege to hear this performance. I enjoyed the Willow Song and Ave Maria almost as much – a real sense of drama and tension, again, good clear diction, and a voice that conveyed the pathos of the role without ever descending into melodrama. I have no idea how Ms Fleming might have sounded in these roles 20 years earlier, but I loved these performances….The audience was clearly diva- focused, and cheered enthusiastically at the end. The encore was the orchestrated version of the R Strauss song, Morgen, movingly, simply, and beautifully sung

Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 7 (Sinfonia Antarctica); Symphony No. 2 ‘A London Symphony’).  BBC Philharmonic- John Wilson, conductorh

I suppose the connection in the programming here would be that (apart from similar orchestral resources being needed, which makes it sensible and efficient to put the two works together), like Richard Strauss’ Alpine Symphony, these works are both not only depictions of a particular place but also have something more universal about them, as ‘life journeys’ – so that there is much more connection between these two works than one might initially think.

The ’Antarctica’ symphony was very well characterised and played by Wilson and the BBC Phil – the opening theme seemingly displaying/resonating with the tragic fate of all us humans, creative, brave and loving but ultimately (at least in Vaughan Williams’ view) returning to dust and desolation. There seemed to me to be a special rightness and force in the use of human voices here, singing into the desolation – and also the organ, as a voice of religious authority. As played by John Wilson and the BBC Philharmonic, the performance was well-structured, with a spectacular climax in the 4^th movement, and a beautiful consoling episode before the final bleak ending, and the whirr of the wind machine

Before the symphony, John Wilson, being a film music buff, provided an extra element to the programme, the short but beautiful prelude Vaughan Williams wrote for the film music for ‘ 49^th Parallel’ (1941, a war film with  Laurence Olivier and Leslie Howard (1941)

Released into the wonderful acoustic of the Bridgewater Hall, I realised the BBC Philharmonic / Wilson performance of VW2 was an exceptional reading of the work. There was beautifully quiet horn playing and a  lovely solo viola in the slow movement and distinguished trumpet playing throughout. There were, as in Sheffield, moments of unsteadiness and untidiness but what I appreciated more in Manchester was the sheer quality of Wilson’s reading of the piece – fastish, not over-indulgent, but with moments of searing beauty and anguish. What a great work……….

Elgar Cockaigne (In London Town), Ravel Piano Concerto in G, Vaughan Williams Symphony No. 2 ‘A London Symphony’).  BBC Philharmonic- John Wilson, conductor, Steven Osborne, piano

This programme was a very interesting one in terms of the connections between the pieces – the VW and Ravel use ‘popular’ music in a complex symphonic texture, VW was a pupil of Ravel, and both the VW and the Elgar pieces are not quite what they seem, even though they are both supposed to have a ‘London’ focus – ‘Cockaigne’ is also the land of fantasy, while the VW symphony is more than redolent of later masterpieces such as the 4^th symphony and Job; finally the VW and Elgar are relatively ‘early’ works.

Something happened at this concert which was a new one on me……Last week the viola soloist had a broken string, occasioning a stop in the first movement of Harold in Italy, but this week we had the harpist in the orchestra having a nose bleed, which stopped the performance of the Ravel Piano Concerto 5 minutes in – the harpist has a lot to do in the Ravel so this was a serious problem. While the harpist sorted himself out, and John Wilson went off stage, Steven Osborne took over and was brilliant! He gave a series of impromptu performances – something jazzy, some Chopin  and something by Debussy  with the audience being asked for suggestions.  This was much appreciated by the audience. Wisely, the conductor and soloist agreed to restart the concerto from the beginning

The Sheffield City Hall remains an awful place to listen to an orchestra in, particularly when there are big late Romantic sounds. As a result, I wasn’t quite sure what I thought of John Wilson’s Elgar. The sound gets flattened by the hall, which is good for listening to inner textures, but not for Elgar’s great washes of sound and lush string melodies. The performance as a result sounded a little clinical and insufficiently excited, but it did enable me to hear parts of the music I’d never really heard before – whether this was Wilson’s skills with the orchestra or the hall I’m not sure. There were a few smudged sounds, particularly from the brass who weren’t together in one of their early and important loud entries in the piece. The Ravel however was a delight – Steven Osborne seemed a much more nuanced soloist than Benjamin Grosvenor, who played this about 6 months ago in Manchester, and the BBC Philharmonics playing too seemed more memorable than the Halle’s. I have grown to like this piece a lot, both the jazzy first movement and the beautiful slow one. The harpist did his bit very well without further nose bleeds and there was also some excellent flute playing, I thought

Coming to the Vaughan Williams, it was interesting to hear it so soon after the Elgar. The latter I think to be a very great composer but his musical soundworld is pretty identifiable as being sourced from Richard Strauss, Brahms and Wagner. VW by contrast sounds much more ‘original’, a voice that isn’t obviously connected in his earlier works to that grand Austro-German tradition. Interestingly, Stephen Johnson in his programme notes for the concert made the connection in relation to this symphony with Mahler, which is intriguing – I’d never thought of VW and Mahler as having any connection, but I guess the way popular music is used by both, particularly in the 1st movement of VW2, is something they both have in common.

I heard the VW2 a number of times in the 70s, always conducted by Adrian Boult. I’ve never heard it live since then and probably not much listened to recordings of it intently in the intervening years. I used to wince at what I thought were some of the vulgarities. Listening to it almost afresh, my over-riding feelings are that it is staggeringly original, and that the symphony has very little to do with London – apart from Big Ben! The basic tension is between the pastoral and the sounds of threat, busyness, tension and tragedy – familiar from the 4th and 6th symphonies and Job. The Big Ben sounds at the beginning and then end seems to be a tolling bell giving hope at sunrise and restoring a sense of balance between the two in the evening. This tension is particularly there in the 2nd and 4th movements. It is easy to hear those as representing some sort of pre -WW1 forebodings, but I think they are about something deeper and more elemental than that. I loved hearing this piece and, as far as it would let me, the hall seemed to allow a fine performance. But it was not an ideal venue to experience it in. So……..I was moved enough by this performance, and by hearing this great work again, that I decided to go to the same team performing it on Saturday at Bridgewater Hall – repeating VW2 and coupling it with VW7 – with much better sound! My only sadness is that the original 1913 piece was over an hour long. In his various revisions VW lopped off about 20 mins, and it was the 1933 version we heard in this performance. It would be nice to hear the uncut version some day……..

Berlioz, Harold en Italie; Kodály, Dances of Galánta; Tchaikovsky, Francesca da Rimini. Halle Orchestra: Lionel Bringuier, conductor; Timothy Ridout, viola

There are a number of connections here possibly in terms of this programme – all have wild elements to their close, two are relatively early works, and the Kodaly and the Tchaikovsky are great orchestral display pieces.  In my own case, I have never heard the Berlioz or Tchaikovsky live – I heard the Kodaly once about 10 years ago at the Proms with Vladimir Jurowski.

The outstanding performance for me was the Tchaikovsky. The Halle sounds quite transfigured when playing the great late Romantic repertory, and their playing was glorious in this piece – a rich string sound, sonorous brass with just a hint of Russian harshness in the brass (I even thought I detected a whiny horn), supple woodwind, and the whirlwind of hell sounding very convincing indeed, with the percussion section, particularly the gong, adding a huge noise at the end. I though Brinquier judged the tempi and balance just right – maybe the brass at the climax was just a little too reserved and un-Russian, but that is a minor criticism

The other two pieces didn’t seem quite on the same level – I thought some of the speeds in the Kodaly were too fast, and the Hale sounded a bit cautious in response – sometimes the rhythms didn’t seem quite right or as well-pointed as they should have done, and also the transitions seemed a bit jerky sometimes from one dance to another.

The Berlioz is a work I have always had problems with listening to it on record or on the radio, and listening to it live didn’t seem to make it any easier to follow. There are some imaginative and memorable leading themes but how they get worked on and resolved in a symphonic sense remains a bit of a mystery to me, and I find myself losing attention – not helped in this performance by the fact that the excellent Matthew Ridou had to stop in the middle of the first movement to adjust a string. But I’ve just replayed parts of the LSO/Colin Davis recording and felt the same lack of engagement. So I’ve done my duty by this piece and won’t be seeking it out again……

Patrick Furrer, Conductor; Sonya Yoncheva, Élisabeth De Valois; Jamie Barton, Eboli; Matthew Polenzani, Don Carlos; Eric Owens, Philippe II; Etienne Dupuis,  Rodrigue Marquis de Posa; John Relyea, Grand Inquisitor; Director, David Mcvicar; Set Design, Charles Edwards

So – this was my first trip after two weeks of isolation from anything social at all! Don Carlos is a work I have never seen live and, indeed, have never even heard extracts in recordings (though I did, somehow, recognise the brotherhood theme which Carlos and Posa sing, and also the opening Act 4 soliloquy by the King seemed vaguely familiar).

 At coming up to 5 hours with two intervals, it felt a bit of a slog. Based on Schiller, the libretto is, in operatic terms, sensible, and, really, in its treatment of political themes of liberation and oppression, there are very interesting things one could do in staging the work (and I am sure there have been such interesting stagings and thrilling contemporary settings over the years). However, this wasn’t one of them. It was an entirely realistic, historically-bound staging, with the usual massive Met sets – huge grey walls, pillars, tombs, and costumes were strictly 16^th century. The cast varied in their acting ability – Posa was, particularly in close-up for camera, very good indeed, Eboli was always very watchable, while some of the rest were either fairly stolid or – in the case of the Inquisitor – hamming it up. Nor was the singing always as good as I could imagine it might be in a different setting – Jamie Barton was tremendous, with a very varied and nuanced delivery, and Matthew Polenzani and Etienne Dupuis were both sensitive singers, able to deal easily with the considerable requirements of their roles. I found Yoncheva less than overwhelming – she seems to have one of those impressive voices that sound just a little out of control (though there was at times some lovely soft singing) and with noisy intakes of breath; her voice in summary sounded a bit effortful. Eric Owens sounded in not very good voice and seemed not to have much of a stage presence – he also didn’t seem to be pointing his words much. He felt to me to be chilled rather than a figure of menace. Yannick Nézet-Séguin was indisposed and Patrick Furrer, one of the Met music staff, stepped in to conduct, with great success.

Probably a first and last time for me – and now I have heard the French version I think I’ll give the Italian one a miss……… I’m left wondering why this work had so little impact on me, when by contrast the Requiem and Otello I’ve loved for over 50 years (and indeed some of the thematic material of Don Carlos did seem to my ears to have links with the Requiem). Was it the number of big roles the work required, which leads in the last two acts to some, perhaps Buggins-turn, arias which don’t take the story forward. Was the basic plot not energising and inspirational enough for Verdi, or maybe too complex? Is the basic melodic material not memorable enough because Verdi was deliberately limiting his lyrical gifts in order to be ‘serious:’? But Aida also deals with similar issues yet is a much more direct and melodically memorable experience…… As I say, I’m not sure…..Maybe it’s my problem rather than the work’s.

Der Holländer – John Lundgren; Daland – Georg Zeppenfeld; Senta – Asmik Grigorian; Erik – Eric Cutler; Mary – Marina Prudenskaya; Der Steuermann – Attilio Glaser; Conductor – Oksana Lyniv; Director – Dmitri Tcherniakov; Sets – Dmitri Tcherniakov; Costumes – Elena Zaytseva

I had been planning to go to the ROHCG Peter Grimes, the ENO Cosi, and ETO’s Golden Cockerel in the W/B 14/3, but – stuff happens, and in my case I got Covid, so all these became ‘might have been’s – The Golden Cockerel is on all over the place but none fits in around other commitments I have, and, as far as Peter Grimes is concerned, I am seeing it in Munich in July. Oh well…. During my enforced house-bound 10 days the most enjoyable musical event I watched on my laptop was this, a video from the opening night of last year’s festival. The Parsifal Tcherniakov I’ve read about staged in Berlin sounds too wayward as a reading. From what I’ve heard, it would give some credibility to Roger Scruton’s claim that “…..Wagner’s dramas concern sacred things, and sacred things are intolerable to those who no longer believe in them: an urge to desecrate replaces the desire to worship and – just as in periods of religious iconoclasm, such as that which destroyed the interiors of our English churches – the finest and most beautiful symbols are torn down and trampled on, lest they retain their power over the human soul”. Well, of course, it would be possible to use that argument to insist that nothing about the staging of these works should have changed since Wagner’s time, which is obviously nonsense – in the case of the Dutchman this completely idiosyncratic account of the work made a lot of sense and produced some remarkably dramatic moments. The re-working of the story is essentially this: the Dutchman’s mother, a single woman, is having an affair with a younger Daland, who is married. He rejects her and as a result she commits suicide in front of her young son (all this is staged during the overture). Years later the son, now a grown man, comes back to the town for vengeance. In the meantime, Daland has married (might already have been married to) Mary, and their daughter is Senta. Senta falls for the Dutchman as in the ‘normal’ reading of the opera; their love duet takes place in the extension of Daland’s house with Daland and Mary sitting frozen at the table. Erik is a bit of a plonker as in the standard version. Eventually The Dutchman leaves and is shot while he does so by Mary – there seems to be some pity for her from Senta as the curtain falls. Not all of this makes sense at first view – and my German isn’t good enough to determine how relevant some of what was being sung was to what we were seeing on stage. But the reading seemed consistent and generated some extraordinarily effective acting and scenes.

The set was a foggy gloomy silhouetted North German town, in shades of grey, yellow and blue. The ‘shipwreck’ scene was set in a micro-detailed outside bar. The choir of seamstresses turned into a town choral society being rehearsed by Mary. Asmik Gregorian was quite outstanding as Senta – vocally thrilling, even reckless, and throwing herself into the role. The roar that greeted her curtain call must have been heard all over the town! John Lundgren was also first class dramatically as the Dutchman, though vocally a bit monochrome and not sufficiently varied. Georg Zeppenfeld was his normal first-class self as Daland. Oksana Lyniv made the orchestra blaze – a thrilling account of the score. Thoroughly recommended!!

Production, Elijah Moshinsky; Set and Costume Designer, Michael Yeargan; Conductor, Marek Janowski. Lise Davidsen, Ariadne; Brenda Rae, Zerbinetta; Isabel Leonard, Composer; Brandon Jovanovich, Bacchus; Sean Michael Plumb, Harlequin; Johannes Martin Kränzle, Music Master; Wolfgang Brendel, Major-Domo

I am not sure I have ever seen this work live before – and of course this wasn’t really ’live’ either but the Met’s live-streaming does bring you as near as possible to a live experience, when you’re sitting in a cinema with others particularly.

Ariadne is a complex work and one that can do your head in! There is artifice within artifice – you’re watching an opera about someone making an opera that then is performed to an imaginary 18^th century audience in front of you, the real audience. However – perhaps luckily – there is only so much directors can do with ‘Ariadne’, and so going along with what Strauss and Hoffmanstahl who, as great artists of the theatre, knew exactly what they wanted and how to achieve it, is the obvious way forward. The main focus for a director has to be on:

1. getting the singers to act well and react to each other credibly, establishing effectively the different characters
2. getting some laughs but not making Zerbinetta and crew too gross
3. ensuring that the evening ends with a bang! (a bit crude, but I would defend that summary – after all, the evening performance as described in the Prologue is meant to end with fireworks at 9pm prompt!)
4. judging the extent to which Ariadne carries over her antagonism to Zerbinetta and her diva-ism from the Prologue into the scenario of the ‘main’ second part.? How should Ariadne react to Zerbinetta?
5. deciding how to play the Composer’s sudden infatuation with Zerbinetta
6. determining how to handle the different layers of artificiality

Whether a revival director, or the original production book from Moshinsky, was responsible, or both, nearly all these were well handled. On point 4, for instance, Lisa Davidsen as Ariadne gave a twitch of annoyance at first that was back to her Prologue character, but then reverted to her ‘stage’ character. I wonder if more could have been done with the artificality angle – why not a small 18th century audience? why not fireworks – visually probably only, not aurally – at the end?

The sets, as often with the Met, seemed fussily massive – I suppose they have to be to fill that huge stage. Obviously there has to be a sense of a rich person’s house in the Prologue but there was a preposterous large spiral staircase, hardly used, for instance, and the set seemed altogether too large for the context. It was altogether very different from some of the sparse Moshinsky 70’s productions at Covent Garden – Lohengrin and Peter Grimes, I’m thinking of. The second was basically decorated backdrops and curtains but quite why the nymphs needed to be high up in their ridiculous chariots was beyond me. Still, I suppose the sets offered a perfectly reasonable framework for the story.

Marek Janowski is a seasoned, not to say veteran (aged now 83, but not looking it), Strauss specialist and his conducting seemed beautifully paced – not over-indulgent (the Prologue positively rattled along) but radiant when it needed to be in the ‘Ariadne’ performance, and the Met orchestra made a remarkably refulgent sound for what is basically a chamber orchestra. The piano seemed more prominent than in some of the recordings I’ve heard.

Lise Davidsen as Ariadne was quite extraordinary. She has a beautiful lower register, offered lovely high soft singing when needed, and crystal clear top notes. Hers is also obviously – even if its full extent can’t be captured by microphones – an extremely powerful voice, soaring over everyone else and pinging off the back walls of the Met. She sounded every bit as good as people say she is. She was wearing as a crown the ornament once worn by Leonie Rysanek and Jessye Norman. I was bitterly disappointed to have to forego her Grieg/Wagner recital in January and I am looking forward to hearing her sing the Four Last Songs in May.  She absolutely is a star,

Two voices that some critics complained about a bit, Brenda Rae as Zerbinetta, and Isabel Leonard as the Composer, both came across well in the broadcast, and both are extremely good actors. Brandon Jovanovich on the other hand sounded insensitive and straining – it makes me a bit worried about the Lohengrin performance at ROHCG in May of his I’m going to see……The other excellent performer was Johannes Martin Kränzle as the Music Master, who added to my positive opinion of him formed from his performance of Beckmesser at Bayreuth

Sky Ingram, Alcina; Patrick Terry, Ruggiero; Mari Askvik, Bradamante; Fflur Wyn, Morgana; Nick Pritchard, Oronte, Claire Pascoe, Melissa. Laurence Cummings, Conductor; Tim Albery, Director; Hannah Clark, Set and Costume Designer;

“Tim Albery‘s new production is inspired by Princess Margaret’s Mustique or Richard Branson’s Necker – a very private, tropical island retreat. In this case, the island is the home of a woman of great beauty, power and wealth who, siren-like, seduces and entrances men, casting them aside when she grows bored with them. This is Alcina. She meets her match in a newly-arrived young man, in fact a woman in disguise come to reclaim her fiancé from Alcina’s enchantment.”

“As they and the rest of Alcina’s entourage become trapped by their ever more complex fears and desires, the sun-drenched beach is left behind and they lose themselves deeper and deeper in the darkening forest, becoming little more than wild beasts, all sophistication stripped away…”

Thus the publicity on the Opera North website. The set is box-like – with a video screen covering the back, and banks of lights above and to each side. The effect is to emphasise the artificiality, the closed in-ness of the island on which the characters find themselves or on which they see based. The lights perhaps are also reminiscent of a night club – another place of fantasy. The lights at the beginning and end of each Act moved to stage level – again emphasising a probing reality beyond the island. The video screen showed the journey to the island and then moved inland through the tropical trees and ferns and creepers. The video movement through the trees seemed a bit arbitrary and didn’t seem particularly linked to the plot the moving inwards. The video wasn’t used – a bit to my disappointment – to suggest the clearing of Ruggiero’s vision to see all Alcina’s transformed former lovers transformed into trees etc……! The only props were some up market seaside-type furniture and a bear-skin. Costumes were broadly contemporary, apart from Alcina’s ball gown which seemed to be from an earlier period. All costumes and props were recycled and the opera was billed as the first fully sustainable opera production in the UK

The Forest of Arden came to my mind   and the island of Alcina seemed similarly a laboratory for relationships. In this production all the protagonists are young people, and relationships is what obsesses them – who’s in love with who and who self and others really are. Mainstream critics were a bit dismissive of Tim Albery’s production but I thought it was very effective, if slightly low-key. All the singers acted credibly and moved imaginatively in the long da capo arias. The ins and outs of the plot were clearly followable. Nothing was exaggerated – there was no obtrusive concept distorting action or characters. We felt for Alcina in her lovely aria Il mio coro   and for Ruggiero, Morgana, Oronte and Bradamante. Some reviewers felt too much had been cut for this ‘performing edition’ – an hour some said – but to me two and a half hours of Handel is enough, and I didn’t feel that the plot suffered unduly from the cuts. On occasion perhaps the recitative element seemed a bit short and we plunged from one long aria to another a bit too quickly, but that was fine by me, given the variety of the music. I really enjoyed the music – every number seemed a hit! The music in its energy, brilliance  melancholy and pain was not just illuminating the feelings and the complexities of the characters but also in its creative zest was life affirming. The sheer fecundity of invention makes you feel better!

But to have impact in this work, as with other Handel operas, you have to have absolutely first rate singers capable of the vocal acrobatics the style demands. While none of the singers could perhaps be described as outstanding  no-one was less than highly competent and all had particular high points. Handel also gives each of them a lot to do!

The stand out singers perhaps were Morgana (particularly her set-piece Act 1 aria ‘Tornami a vagheggiar’) and Oronte, in terms of the clarity of their runs and their beauty of tone. But Ruggerio and Bradamante matched them on occasion. The Alcina was Sky Ingram, a late replacement for an indisposed Máire Flavin, who had a tall imposing stage presence. Her voice sounded a bit large and unwieldy for this music, but she got more nimble as the work proceeded.

I really enjoyed this evening – much more than I was expecting!!!!